beauty, and
possessing great wealth, the "scandal" only added to her claim, in a
society where notoriety of any kind is regarded as a distinction.

She was the reigning belle of the capital. Her word was law on every
theme of fashion and taste; her opinions exerted a considerable
influence on matters of high political bearing; and despite the
ambiguity of her position, she was the arbitress of every claim to
admission into that society which arrogated to itself the name of being
"the best."

It is needless to say that a station of the kind engenders a species of
tyranny to which the world responds by inventing all manner of stories
and strange histories; and thus the Marchesa de la Norada was by some
proclaimed a natural daughter of the Emperor Napoleon,--by others, of
an English Royal Duke. She was a widow, and the wife of half-a-dozen
personages together. There was not an European court into which she had
not brought discord,--not a cabinet where she had not sown intrigue. Her
beauty had seduced, her gold corrupted, and her wiles entrapped half the
great statesmen of the age; while there was scarcely a crime within the
red catalogue of the law that was not laid to her charge; and yet,
with all these allegations against her, she was more sovereign in that
capital than the rightful queen of the land. This was the presence into
which I was to be introduced to-night, and--I frankly own it--I would
have rather confronted the searching scrutiny of the most penetrating of
men than meet the careless, half-bestowed glances of that woman! nor was
it at all unlikely that to such a test they wished now to subject me and
my pretensions.

It is far easier for many men to confront a personal danger, the peril
of life or limb, than to meet the trying difficulty of a slight before
the world. To myself, the former would be as nothing in comparison. I
could face any amount of peril in preference to the risk of a public
mark of depreciation, and from a woman, too! where redress was as
impossible as reply was useless.

It was already midnight ere I could muster courage to set out,--not that
the hour was inappropriate, for the Marchesa's receptions only began
when the opera was over. As I drove along the Chiaia, the crowd of
carriages told that this was a night of more than ordinary attraction,
and more than one equipage of the Court passed by, showing that some
members of the royal family would be present. This again terrified me.
W